19 minute read
My Students, the Police
Eleanor Bader is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, New York, who writes about education, domestic social justice movements, books, and art.
First-Person Singular BY ELEANOR J. BADER My Students, the Police
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It’s the first day of the semester at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York, and everyone is tense and a little scared. The professor, in this case me, hands out a syllabus and then describes the course—a basic English comp class— pointing out deadlines before asking the students to introduce themselves.
It’s a familiar but nerve-wracking ritual.
Typically, my classes consist of twenty-eight students between the ages of eighteen and forty-something. As they take turns saying their names, majors, and countries of origin, other students nod their heads in recognition or approval. By the end of the go-around, I’m racing to pin names to faces and intended fields of study. But here’s another truth: After sixteen years of teaching, I’m continually stunned by how many students cite criminal justice, and policing, as their career goal.
When I ask them to explain, they invariably say they are driven by a desire to help people. This group of American dreamers—from countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, China, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Palestine, Russia, and Syria— and a smattering of the U.S.-born—say that wearing the badge of the New York Police Department and taking an oath to serve and protect would be an immeasurable honor.
I am both humbled and horrified. How, I wonder, can these seemingly mild-mannered people show such reverence for law enforcement?
Over the years, I’ve seen students weep over the fate of a character we’ve met in a novel, lament the unfair treatment of a fictional person, and share their joy when justice is served. They’ve written essays that describe hardships in their countries of origin, then language barriers, a lack of access to medical care, and immigration woes once they emigrate. Still, they usually see these obstacles as temporary and express faith that they will succeed. Attending an American college like Kingsborough, they tell me, is the fulfillment of a dream long nurtured.
This makes their desire to join the New York City Police Department or work for other law enforcement agencies, all the more baffling. I ask myself: Can they possibly be unaware of the never-ending cascade of unprovoked police shootings and incidents of brutality that have become heinously routine?
I know, of course, that careers in criminal justice, while not lucrative, are union jobs with health benefits, paid vacation, tuition reimbursements, and pensions. This has to appeal to many of Kingsborough’s 19,000 students, folks with a median household income of $47,996, a full 70 percent of them low income.
“Historically, government jobs are the route to the middle class, especially for African Americans,” Stuart Parker, assistant professor of sociology at Kingsborough, tells me. “A lot of our students are looking for a job that appears to be steady. They’re trying to figure out what to do in an environment that seems to offer a dearth of choices.”
Under the NYPD’s current contract, rookie officers earn a starting salary of $42,500. Five-anda-half years down the road, they’ll make $85,292. This is a far cry from the minimum wage that most Kingsborough students—almost all of whom work full time while attending school—are currently paid.
But the decision to become a police officer is not just about money, says my former student, NYPD officer Jonathan C., who asked that his full surname not be used. I’ve known Jonathan, now a married father of one, for more than a decade; we’ve stayed in touch through Facebook. He’s a good man: thoughtful, kind, smart, empathetic, and hard working.
An NYPD officer since 2016, he tells me that he loves the job because it is never routine. I then ask if he is bothered by the many cases of excessive force and other police misconduct that have repeatedly occurred, drawing protesters to the streets.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re an officer or not, the law should be upheld, and the violators should be brought to justice,” Jonathan tells me. “Most of my co-workers saw the video of George Floyd being killed and we felt disgusted because that situation makes all officers look bad, even the good ones.”
Jonathan further believes that Derek Chauvin and his Minneapolis police colleagues should be held accountable. Nonetheless, he draws the line between
Floyd’s horrific death and the demands of Black Lives Matter and police abolitionists.
“Black Lives Matter groups fuel hate and disdain for police officers and authority,” he says. “I get their intentions, but defunding the police means that highcrime communities all over the country will suffer. Like many fields, policing includes good people and bad people, good cops and bad cops.”
For Jonathan, as for many police defenders, it’s a matter of weeding out a few “bad apples”—officers who are hot-headed, impulsive, or racist—while leaving the overall system intact. Hearing this, I bristle at the lack of recognition of the systemic problems that let racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and transphobia go unchecked, and allow brutality to flourish.
Still, I’d like to think that I can play a small role in turning out better officers, that helping people interested in law enforcement earn a college degree, with exposure to classes in the liberal arts, is worth the effort.
Perhaps it’s naïveté, but I hold onto research that suggests that having a college diploma—regardless of major—can have a demonstrable impact on stemming police abuse and violence. One 2010 study, in fact, found that college-educated officers are 40 percent less likely to use force and 30 percent less likely to fire their guns than those with less education.
What’s more, the study affirmed that college-educated officers demonstrated better critical thinking, were more open to diversity, and exhibited better moral reasoning than those without a degree.
But completing college does not guarantee that police will behave responsibly or without rancor. Derek Chauvin, after all, earned a degree in law enforcement in 2006 from Minnesota’s Metropolitan State University.
It’s unsettling, all of it. But no matter my reservations, the so-called criminal justice system is a major employer, and students who want to work in this field deserve respect and need to be seen as the individuals they are. Whether I like it or not, millions of Americans will continue to be employed in criminal justice agencies for the foreseeable future; last year alone, 697,195 were police officers.
I believe they should be well trained. And well educated.
Unfortunately, the requirements for entering law enforcement do not reflect this—with most police departments requiring nothing more than a high school diploma or GED. According to the National Police Foundation, fewer than a third of sworn officers have a four-year degree, although slightly more than half have a two-year degree.
Chauvin notwithstanding, I steadfastly believe that attending college—which is about more than simply preparing someone for the job market—is a social good. As my Kingsborough colleague Jason Leggett, an assistant professor in the department of history, philosophy, and political science, points out, new ideas can sway students to consider previously unimagined fields of study. It can also help to demystify policing and criminal justice more broadly.
Along the way, racist ideas and white supremacy can be deconstructed, prodding those who listen well to consider the ways that prejudicial ideas about people of color and the poor have been undermined and intimidated by law enforcers.
“Students who watch a lot of police shows on TV see situations and responses that don’t exist in real life,” Leggett explains. “After 9/11, a lot of people wanted to become firefighters and police officers to fight terrorists, and I continue to see the hangover from that. Plus, some students have family in the police department and may want to continue that legacy.”
“It’s worth mentioning,” he continues, “that as they study, many students change their minds about joining the police force and instead go on to become social workers, teachers, or health-care professionals.” Hearing classmates talk in personal terms, about what it was like to be stopped, frisked, or arbitrarily questioned by police, Leggett adds, can upend their plans, causing them to seek other ways to contribute to bettering their communities.
We can hope. But I also have to believe that even for those students who are not dissuaded, the experience of attending college, including taking literature classes like mine, will make them better cops, prison guards, or probation officers. Experience tells me that when students immerse themselves in a text, they begin to understand other worlds and other realities. Imagined borders disappear.
In addition, college-educated students see the ways psychology, ethics, history, politics, and language intersect. I’ve seen this rattle many a worldview, including my own, and tear previously held biases asunder. Indeed, books can nudge us toward greater compassion, empathy, honesty, and integrity. They can also encourage us to use our emotional intelligence to benefit others.
As another semester draws to a close, I hope my students will remember the novels and essays we’ve read and incorporate the values we’ve discussed into their personal and professional lives. My hope is that even if they opt to join the NYPD, their education will have given them a better-developed ethical foundation on which to hook their badges. It’s the only optimism I’ve been able to conjure. I hold it dear. ◆
Losing Your Health Care to COVID-19
The pandemic has forced workers off of employer-sponsored plans and into the unknown.
BY SHARON JOHNSON
FOR MORE THAN FORTY-FIVE YEARS, Shirley Smith has been a dedicated member of the workforce. A can-do woman, she helped customers select furniture and trained legions of salespeople at Art Van in Taylor, Michigan. Steady paychecks enabled her to support her son, buy a home, and manage her diabetes.
But in March, Smith’s world collapsed when the retailer, where she had worked for twenty-three years, announced that it was going out of business.
“I was frantic,” recalls Smith in a phone interview. “Jobs aren’t easy to come by in the Detroit area, which has battled unemployment for decades. But the worst blow was the imminent loss of health insurance.”
Like many people with diabetes, sixty-year-old Smith depends on insulin and other medications to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure. Diabetes ravages eyes and limbs, so she requires regular check-ups with physicians.
“Art Van had an outstanding medical plan that covered my medications, one of which costs $1,500 for thirty pills,” she says. “As a result, my out-of-pocket costs for medical care totaled only $80 to $90 a month.”
Smith realized that she might die without her medications, so she called her physician, who provided some free samples. Her cataract surgery was postponed because Smith feared that the cost of the operation and follow-up care would sink her budget.
Sharon Johnson, a frequent contributor to The Progressive, is a New York City-based freelance writer who is now writing a book about how COVID-19 has changed the U.S. workforce.
“Last spring was an agonizing time,” Smith says. “My medical expenses soared because I had to spend $900 a month on medications.”
In June, Smith landed a new job as a sales manager at another company. Its health insurance plan is not as good as what she had at Art Van, but, she says, “I’m more fortunate than many of my former co-workers.”
United for Respect, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that advocates for economic justice for retail workers, has rallied to the support of the 3,100 employees of Art Van. Its September 28 letter urged Thomas H. Lee Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm which took over Art Van in 2017, to give former employees $1,500 each to cover three months of out-of-pocket insurance so they could weather the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter argued that the $400 per worker payments provided by the company’s hardship fund were woefully inadequate. “[F]ormer employees are facing astronomical hospital bills, unable to afford prescriptions, surviving a pandemic as immune-compromised, and recovering from contracting COVID, among many other circumstances,” the letter stated. A spokesperson for United for Respect says the letter drew no response.
The experience of the Art Van workers is becoming increasingly common as the pandemic continues to ravage the U.S. economy. An estimated 164 million Americans under age sixty-five—nearly half the entire U.S. population—were covered by employer-provided insurance plans, as the Commonwealth Fund reported in November 2019.
The group recently estimated that, as of June 2020, some 7.7 million workers with employer-sponsored insurance had lost their jobs due to the pandemic-induced recession. These plans also covered 6.9 million of their dependents, pushing the total to 14.6 million people.
“Only with time will we know how many job losses are ultimately permanent,” the group said.
A GOVERNMENT SURVEY cited in an August report from the Economic Policy Institute found that for every 100 workers who lose employer-provided insurance, eighty-five retain access to some form of coverage. (See sidebar on page 36 for details.)
The Labor Department reported in October that 787,000 Americans filed for state unemployment benefits for the first time that week, roughly 40,000 fewer than the previous week but still roughly four times the weekly claims from before the pandemic.
Since February, nearly 700,000 people have left the workforce. In October, unemployment stood at 6.9 percent, down from a record high of nearly 15 percent in April. The nation has lost nearly eleven million jobs to COVID-19. Many are gone for good. The newly jobless must find other ways to obtain health care.
Sorting through insurance options and figuring out what is best can be a daunting task. People who have lost their employer-sponsored insurance must find ways to cover medications and treatments, find new provider networks, and choose deductibles.
Fortunately, grassroots groups, unions, legal aid societies, and others have launched extensive public awareness campaigns to advise unemployed workers like Kathy Vanco of Avenel, New Jersey.
Vanco, who lost her job as an accounts receivable clerk in March, has high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was “terrified when I learned my insurance would end in five days.” A friend suggested that she contact New Jersey Citizen Action, a statewide grassroots organization.
The staff explained Vanco’s options and helped the sixty-three-year-old widow enroll in a marketplace plan under the Affordable Care Act, which provides subsidies to help pay for premiums.
“I am very grateful because they helped me find a plan that has the benefits I need, so I don’t have to worry every day that I will become incapacitated by going without regular medical care,” Vanco says. “My share of the premiums is $128 a month, which I can afford, even though I lost my job.”
Unemployed workers like Vanco must think about health insurance in ways they never did before, because this is the first economic crisis, in recent history, triggered by a public health emergency.
“During previous recessions, workers were focused on getting back to work, but now they must also consider whether they will survive the pandemic,” says Maura Collinsgru, health care program director of New Jersey Citizen Action.
Uninsured workers who skip routine care for chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension risk dying of a heart attack or stroke, she explains. Accident victims who forego emergency treatments may be left with permanent disabilities.
Although the majority of people who get COVID19 have mild symptoms, those who develop complications like pneumonia and require hospitalization may face thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. “Many unemployed workers without insurance must make draconian decisions,” Collinsgru explains. “Do they spend their meager funds on feeding their families or do they seek medical treatments for themselves? Most workers put their families first.”
THE SPIKE IN the loss of employer-provided insurance could exacerbate workers’ long-term financial security, says John R. Keller, supervising attorney of Legal Aid of North Carolina, which established a navigator consortium. The group of health care, social services, and legal aid organizations provides free help to state residents to enroll in the health insurance marketplace plans offered under the Affordable Care Act.
“Replacing health insurance is usually not the first concern of people when they lose their jobs,” he says. “But it soon tops their list of worries because it can lead to crushing debts and even bankruptcy if they become ill.”
Before the pandemic, one in three Americans said they were unable to pay a $400 medical bill without selling their belongings or borrowing money. About 530,000 Americans were filing for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills or the loss of income due to illness.
Historic unemployment during the pandemic has shed a light on how many people live just one paycheck away from losing everything, says Karen Pollitz, senior fellow of health reform and private insurance at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit.
“The Affordable Care Act is a lifesaver for the millions of Americans who face the double whammy of a loss of a job and health insurance,” Pollitz tells The Progressive. “Our studies show that nearly half of the 27 million who lost job-based benefits from March 1 through May are eligible for Medicaid and an additional 8.4 million qualify for marketplace plans.”
Unfortunately, Pollitz says, “many unemployed
workers won’t qualify for Medicaid because they fall in the coverage gap of having incomes above Medicaid eligibility limits but below the poverty level for the lower levels of marketplace premium tax credits.”
Unemployed workers in Texas and eleven other states that have not expanded Medicaid are finding themselves in dire straits. “We are receiving frantic calls from people who have lost their job-provided health benefits and cannot afford the medications and therapy that enable them to function and even survive in some cases,” says Greg Hansch, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Texas.
Levels of anxiety and depression have spiked during the pandemic, Hansch says. In addition to the loss of income and savings, many people have had to homeschool their kids and live in situations that test their ability to cope. Unfortunately, at the time they need therapy and counseling the most, many people with mental conditions cannot afford it.
“Paying for a drug that costs $1,300 a month is impossible for many workers with middle-income jobs, let alone someone who earns the minimum wage,” says Hansch, whose organization is working with pharmaceutical companies and therapists to provide free or reduced-cost care. “Some people are going without eating to pay for medications. Others are going off the drugs, which increases their risks for ending up in a hospital or even the criminal justice system.”
The persistent coronavirus and record unemployment have heightened calls to reform or replace employer-provided health benefits. Progressives including Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, have called for Congress to enact a governmentfinanced, single-payer system like Medicare for All.
Meanwhile, some progress is occurring at the state level. Georgia ordered all health insurers to refrain from canceling health policies because of nonpayments during the pandemic. In New Jersey, the state has waived prior authorization before hospitalization as well as premiums for individuals enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As Dena Mottola Jaborska, associate director of New Jersey Citizen Action, noted, “These changes will encourage parents of the estimated 80,000 uninsured children in New Jersey to enroll their children in these life-saving programs.”
Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of Family Values @ Work, a nonprofit group of twenty-seven state and local coalitions that promote family friendly workplace policies, predicts that the loss of jobs and employer-provided benefits will have a profound impact on future economic policies.
“COVID-19 has shown that the old economy doesn’t work for anyone,” she says. “We need a broader social- insurance system that provides basic protections like health insurance, child care, and sick days so that the United States can become a caring economy.” ◆
If You Lose Your Employer-Provided Health Insurance . . .
Family Members’ Policy: You may be eligible to join the employer-sponsored plan of your spouse or partner. Those who are under age twenty-six may join their parents’ plan. Medicaid: Many people who lose their health coverage— especially those who live in the majority of states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)— can qualify for Medicaid, depending on their income. Unemployment compensation counts as income, but savings and other assets are not factored in. Some states allow adults with higher incomes to qualify; all states set lower eligibility levels for children and pregnant women. Marketplace: Marketplace plans under the Affordable Care Act offer premium subsidies to those who expect their 2020 income to be 200 to 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($12,490–$49,960 for an individual and $25,750–$103,000 for a family of four). Marketplace plans have high deductibles, but cost-sharing subsidies are available to people with incomes up to 250 percent of the poverty level. COBRA: This program permits workers of companies with twenty or more employees to continue their employer-provided insurance for up to eighteen months. Workers must pay the employer’s portion as well as their own, which makes COBRA prohibitively expensive for many unemployed workers. Short-Term Health Plans: An executive order by President Trump in 2018 permits individuals to purchase short-term health plans with an initial duration of a year and a renewal option that allows the plan to remain in force for three years. But these plans do not cover preexisting conditions and impose maximum benefit limits. Many states prohibit them or impose strict restrictions. Community Health Centers: These clinics have been providing primary care to patients regardless of their ability to pay since the 1960s. Now they are ramping up their efforts to serve low income individuals and families who have been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and have no other place to turn. —Sharon Johnson
We are living at a unique moment of history, a moment of confluence of severe crises: environmental destruction, serious and growing threat of nuclear war, deterioration of functioning democracy, and much more. The crises have deep roots, not easily extirpated. Crises have been raised to impending catastrophe by the malevolence of the Trump Administration, but even if that cancer can be excised by new leadership that might be responsive to popular activist pressures, the urgent challenges will remain. There are feasible solutions, but the opportunities have to be grasped and pursued, and without delay. There has never been a time when sober and informed analysis was more needed as a guide to action, the kind that The Progressive has been providing since its founding more than a century ago by Fighting Bob La Follette. Please help make sure that this indispensable voice continues to resound loud and clear at this critical moment of human history. Your contributions to its flourishing will be repaid many times over by its service to the cause of peace and justice, even decent survival.
Noam Chomsky
